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4AERAGRAM 5/2The rmum.- of a r,.".Ground Truthpacking blocksÑcalle "packingn becauseround truth, I was once told, is athey once filled the space betweeen pyraNASA term for what we observe onmid core and outer casing. These remainthe ground on the Earth, Moon, orafter the smooth outer casing was removedMars, as opposed to our images from afar.in the Middle Ages. But when we measA careful study of ground truth can oftend look emy . y J g iout that the steps were notwither distant images. A carefulwhat is on the ground at Gizamental template, and no more. Iting twenty years of passing by anBering up and down these towerinof stone.Considering the keen intePyramid," the WGBH Nabout technique, it is remarkableGiza Pyramids. Rogermason from Sudbury,those in the Great PyramiIt was time for Roger to l a y b e second course of blocks of the internpyramid. He was unabashedly setting theblocks by steel cable hung from the teethshould Roger makeregular stepped coursesneto bottom. We turnedat hand for somesteps. Then it hit me:the bçoksThe real thing is right t h y . Ipoinid through the opening of the f a t tothethe r# Great Pyramid looming upfnrnieRnfi a merican auto mechanic'sexpression to say the core masonry has avery large "slop factor."Why was the core stone so irregular? Itwas only fill for the gleaming shell. It wasin this outer casing that the buildersachieved the great precision in the pyramids that has fueled so much modern specillation and awe. From the very few casingstones that remain at the base, we can seewith what skill and care the builders placedthem to form the foot of the pyramid.Joints between large casing blocks, someweighing as much as 15 tons, are often sofine one cannot even insert a razor blade,and these fine seams sometimes run backfrom the outer face more than a meter. Butthe casing stones themselves were probablyGreat Pyramid "Slop Factor"While the size of the Great Pyramid isindeed astounding, it is still a very humant the product of industrialand precision. It contains,300,000 blocks of stone,on average about 2.5not mean that allstones weigh 2.5 tons,Theto an image of uniblocks. Yet any-team and I &overed. The outermostpacking stows are not only irregular butare also pro essivelysmaller toward them the core stones are even830s Howard Vyse gougednter of the south side ofwhile looking for anotherwound we can see howAcross both -pages:Outline drawing- of. amblocks of varying shapes and sizes based onstones in the Khufit PyramidRight; The Khafre Qnzmid seenfrom the base. The con andpacking stones are theirregualr blocks in theforeground (the "s -?s¡)Above them a n theprecisely shapedcasing blocks,forming a

Spring 2002not uniform in size from top to bottom, aswe can see in the Khafre Pyramid wherethe uppermost casing remains like theortheast corner oeast and southeast corners, where thedownward slope of the plateau left nobedrock in the core, the builders usedenormous limestone blocks, two coursesthick, to level the perimeter.Above the base, the pyramid core isade up of very rough, irregular stones.ing more than the lower third of theid, this rubblv laver could be pack-5casing. Some ground truth is in order forthese theorists.The fact that the bulk of the pyramid isnot modular squared blocks laid in regularcourses has enormous implications for howwe should be looking at ancient Egyptianpyramid building. If the blocks arc not ofmodular sizes, the tools for hauling, such asthese blocks turn out to be far frombetween Khafre's coLoose, Lumpy Interiorto 67 centimetersto the thickness orobably a matchcomposed of loose, irregular fiseams and gaps in the stepped'ut atheHe checked the angles oserved at the top of thetion to the square of th50'.The builders had to bend the cornerangles slightly to make them meet at theapex! Pyramid building was not an exactscience; much of it was ad hoc.each other," according to Vito Maragioand Celeste Rinaldi who carried out anarchitecture survey of the pyramidsbetween 1963 and 1975.*Core Stone In the Khafre PyramidImplications for Pyramid BuildingAt the base of Khafre's pyramid we seeother evidence of ad hoc building. Herethe coursing of the core stones are not allhorizontal. The builders tailored blocks tofit the sloping bedrock that they left protruding in the core as they leveled the surrounding court and terrace. In the north-Most theorists-both professional andamateur-assume that the pyramids arecomposed of generic two-and-a-half-tonblocks. They then set about theorizing howthe builders got these blocks up and inplace, ignoring the "slop factor" evidentthroughout the pyramids except in the fineAshrafAbd al-Aziz stands in the gash made byHoward Vye in the southface of the &faPyramid during his 1836-38 explomtions.wooden sledges or cradles, could not bestandardized. It is hard to imagine thebuilders using levers, fulcrums, andcribbage supports for "blocks" that arc notsquare but trapezoidal or oval or irregular.* V. Maragioglio and C. Rinaldi, L'ArchuttitM ddle1966. iritmidi e n f i t e , a r t V,e p.

AERAGRAM 5/2l-CausewayMagazines1'fiLostCity of the Pyramids"lhen George Reisner excavatedMenkaure's pyramid and templesbetween 1906 and 1910 he founda complete archaeological profile of the lifeof this complex from its construction to itsabandonment. One of his findings, thatMenkaure's builders never finished thepharaoh's pyramid complex, is of particularimportance to our excavations.Life and Death of a Pyramid ComplexMenkaure's pyramid, the last of the threeGiza monuments, is considerably smallerthan his predecessors'. But his temple complex was to have been a grand affair.Reisner found that his builders began withthe same confidence as when they hadworked for Khafre and "planned a stonetemple of grandiose proportions" (diagramon the right). But it was never completed.In the upper temple (the mortuary temple,located in front of the pyramid) the workmen had laid out the core walls in colossallimestone blocks. In the Valley Temple theyhad laid giant blocks for a foundation platform and completed portions of the northern and western walls. Then the construction stopped abruptly, presumably becauseMenkaure died.Menkaure's successor and son, Shepseskaf, resumed work but abandoned thegiant core block construction and finishedthe temples in plastered mud brick. On astela he decreed: "He made it as a monument for his father, the King of Upper andLower Egypt, [Menkaure]." Reisner foundthe stela in fragments near the entrance tothe upper temple.Khentkawes: The Mysterious QueenToward the end of the 4th Dynasty aqueen named Khentkawes, about whomwe know very little, built a large mastabalike tomb and pyramid town just north-west of Menkaure's Valley Temple (mapon page 8).Soon after, the royal house movedaway from Giza and Shepseskaf went toSouth Saqqara to build his own funerarymonument. But the Giza Plateau was nottotally abandoned.Against the front of Menkaure's ValleyTemple a warren of mud brick houses,bins, and small round granaries sprang up(map on facing page). The inhabitantsostensibly carried on rituals for the deadking and were probably rewarded with anexemption from taxes in goods and labor.(See "Sacred Slum" on the facing page.)Menkaure, Later Kings, Our ExcavationsIt is likely that while Menkaure's templeconstruction was underway, our royal production complex and workers' town was inits heyday. Smoke curled from dozens ofbakeries turning out the big conical loavesof heavy bread that sustained these veryworkers, or their contemporaries.Colleagues have asked: How do weknow? How do we know this complex supported workers during pyramid and monument construction?Isn't it possible that thecomplex furnished offerings for the templesfollowing construction over the many yearsthat daily services were carried on in theseinstitutions?It could well be that our productioncomplex sent goods for cult services thatwere underway during Menkaure's and perhaps Shepseskaf's reign. But any role itplayed in provisioning those services wouldhave ceased by the end of the 4th Dynasty.We can confidently say after ten years ofdigging in this complex that all of ourmaterial culture, particularly the ceramics,date to the middle to late 4th Dynasty.Styles of material culture changed inexorably 4,600 years ago, just as they doIdeal: Thefirst phase of Menkaure's Valley Temple,which was bepn in stone but completed in mudbrick by Pharaoh Shepseskaf, Menkaure's son.today, so that periods can be readily distin-Iguished. After several seasons at Giza, ourceramicist, Anna Wodzinska, has seen littleor no 5th Dynasty or later pottery amongour finds.Perhaps the most compelling indicatorsof 4th Dynasty occupation are the inscribed mud sealings that we have recovered throughout the excavations. These littie bits of especially hard mud derive fromthe seals on bags, boxes, string locks ofdoors, and pottery vessels. Rolled with anincised cylinder when wet, they bear hieroglyphs giving the names of institutions,officials, kings, and possibly personalnames. We have many bags of sealingmaterial in our store yet to check forinscriptions, but thus far, of the 589 sealing fragments with incised or impresseddesigns that we have registered, 61 haveroyal names. All but 10 of these bearMenkaure's name and none have laterpharaohs' names-not even Shepseskaf's.Since Reisner found sealings of several laterOld Kingdom pharaohs in Menkaure'sMortuary Temple, we might expect themon our site if it had remained in servicelong after the 4th Dynasty.Continued on page 8

Spring 20027eorge Reisner, digging in 1906-1910. and Selim Hassan in1932, found a small town fronting on the Menkaure ValleyTemple. Egyptologists have long known of "pyramid towns"from texts on tombs and stelae. Tombs at Giza record the titlesof mayors and overseers of the pyramid towns of Khufu andKhafre. On a stela found at Dahshur, Pepi I, a 6th Dynastypharaoh, decrees that the inhabitants of the pyramid town of 4thDynasty pharaoh Sneferu (builder of the Bent and NorthPyramids of Dahshur) and their wells, trees, and canals wereexempt from taxes.After Menkaure died, the inhabitants of his pyramid town werealso exempted from taxes, so long as they served the cult inmemory of the dead king. Their town in front of the temple wascomprised of small mud brick houses and round silo granaries.During the life of the temple, as the pyramid town continued togrow, its waddle, daub, and mud brick huts and bins spread upover the eastern temple wall and into the court. To keep the settlement at bay, a thick screen wall was built across the open portico on the western side of the court. A doorway at the top of thelimestone ramp gave access to the inner sanctuary. Fouralabaster statues of Menkaure flanked the door to the offeringhall-the raison d'etre of the town.As the town invaded the temple, the driving force may havebeen tax relief rather than piety. Indeed, one has to wonder abouthow devout these "priests" were considering the condition of thetemple and the deceased king's images. The famous triad and- 012 mMenkaure'stemple (finishedby Shepseskaf)the dyad statues of Menkaure, some of the most renown piecesin art history, were stacked on the dirty floors of back magazines, a Additions tofirst templePepi 11'stemplefar cry from their current homes in elegant track-lit modern museums of the world's great cities! Already in the first phase of the temple's use, the residents were smashing some of Menkaure's statuesto make funerary vases for those who still chose to be buried in theRed-The valley temple, as Resisncrfound it. The gritnaries and tiny housesinvaded the temple after Menakaure's death and again after Pepi I1 rebuilt thetemple during the 12th Dynasty.Giza necropolis.At some point during the 6th Dynasty, probably before theA rectangular thick-walled anteroom replaced the recessedreign of Pepi 11, the temple was badly damaged by a flash floodportico in front of the sanctuary. On the trodden dirt floor ofrunning down the desert plateau after a downpour. The floodthe offering room Reisner found a simple bench of water-washed away the western end of Menkaure's offering room andworn alabaster slabs where the townsfolk must have left thepooled in the court.deceased king his token sustenance. The small mud huts,Rebirth of a Pyramid Townagain filled the open court of the Valley Temple. MeanwhileSometime around the middle of his reign, Pepi II, the last king ofthe denizens maintained the cult of the king in a dark closet-Dynasty 6, renewed Menkaure's cult and rebuilt his valley temple.sized sanctuary at the rear of the Valley Temple, and in thestorage bins, and grain silos of the renewed pyramid townReisner found a decree of Pepi II in the vestibule exempting theupper Mortuary Temple. In its second phase the Valleyinhabitants from taxes. Originally displayed near the entrance, itTemple was really nothing more than the sanctuary (anteroomdeclared that "in the pyramid town of the King of Upper andand offering room), and the enclosing walls of this warren of.Lower Egypt, Menkaure-is-divine My Majesty (Pepi 11) commandssmall rooms and granaries. All but the very core of the origi-the protection of this pyramid town." The king granted privilegesnal temple was choked and buried by the very town thatand exemptions to the "priests" of the pyramid city.existed to service it.r\JM f l Lehner

- -8AERAGRAM 5/2A Tale Of TWO TOWIISContinuedfrom page 6In sum, all the archaeological evidence-seal impressions, ceramics, otherartifacts indicatesthat our site was in itspenultimate phase in the reign ofMenkaure and that it went out of use soonafterwards, probably after work on hispyramid ceased.Final D a yWe see signs that during the site's finalphase people were still occupying it afterthe gallery complex had begun to fall intoruin, perhaps during the years followingMenkaure's death while his monumentswere being completed. It has been myimpression that the gallery complex waspurposefully dismantled. Not all teammembers and visiting colleagues agree.As we analyze our voluminous samplesof ancient plant remains, animal bone, andceramics, we also keep an eye out forchanges that might reflect the royal house'sdeparture from Giza during the reign ofShepseskaf, while he was finishing hisfather's pyramid complex. One impressionis that there was a change in the way theproduction facility was provisioned withmeat. Richard Redding, our faunal analyst,has found a shift in the animal bone suggesting a change from ceremonial centerfare to perhaps workmen's humble meals,possibly because the Royal House had left.In the gallery complex, which representsthe earlier phase, there are high lev& of 2year-old cattle and young sheepgoats, predominately male, but very little pig. Thecattle almost certainly came from estates onthe Delta, such as the site of Kom el-Hisn,where young cattle were fattened for sacrifice at ceremonial centers. In the laterdeposits, such as in the Buttress Building,the cattle bone are from older animals.They may have been procured from localvillages, rather than specialized estates.During the later phase sheepgoat were alsoprocured in a different way. Far less abundant than in the earlier phase, their bonesare only from meat-bearing elements, indicating that they were butchered elsewhere,rather than on site as they were in the gal-

Spring 2002leries. Richard suggests that the sheep-goatmeat was supplied as "prepared packages,"possibly from a central authority.In contrast to the galleries, the ButtressBuilding has an abundance of pig, a foodwhich would not have been supplied bythe state. In ancient Egypt pig breedingwas a cottage industry, outside the state'spurview. It most likely came from nearby,perhaps even raised in the domestic areasof the site.Our Site and Pyramid TownsEgyptologists have espoused two viewsabout the towns that sprung up aroundpyramids. On the one hand there arc suggestions that a royal residence would havebeen part of the pyramid town. Produceand livestock from farms,ranches, estatesand villages throughout the Delta andMiddle Egypt could thus have been delivered directly to the town. With pyramidand royal residence thus linked, Giza couldhave been a kind of national capital'downtown Egyptn-for three generations.On the other hand, it has been suggested that pyramid towns were small, andgrew into irregular villages over time. BarryKemp has cited the settlement that invadedthe Menkaure Valley Temple as the "villagization of a monument." Paule PosenerKridger estimated that the population of apyramid town would have been a few hundred at most, based on the Abusir Papyri,the archives of the pyramid temple town of5th Dynasty pharaoh Neferirkare.These two images of pyramid townsmust reflect realities before and after aking's death. The well-planned town ofKhentkawes, stretching along her causewayjust north of the Menkaure Valley Temple,is the footprint of a town created by theroyal house as it moved out of the area.The long-term history of this settlement ispoorly known. But the sacred slum ofMenkaure, as it developed through thecourse of the Old Kingdom, represents thelife cycle of a pyramid town after the royalhouse is long gone, except for cameoappearances in the form of decrees etchedin stone.ContextThis is the historical and archaeologicalcontext in which we must interpret ourdiscoveries south of the Wall of the Crow.Much of what we have mapped, and mostof what we have excavated intensively, isfrom a transition period at Giza, a transition from a site of royal design to a villageThe Giza Plateau showing our excavations in AreaA, Menkaure; Va& Temple, and Khentkawas'mustabatpymmid town. The contemporary viUagtNaadet es-Semman lies wry close to our site. Thecontours of the plateau are shown in fray, with thedarker Unes indicating 5-meter contours. (Topomap and plan o f h a A by Peggy Sarulers,Archaeological Graphic Services.)9AERAGRAMVolume 5, Number 2,-----EditorWlimaWetterstromHarvard University-.AERAGRAM is published by AERA,Ancient Egypt Research Ass

After Fred Koch died in 1967, David and his three brothers inher- ited the company. In 1983 he and Charles bought out their broth- ers to gain control of Koch Industries. David joined a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the Koch Engineering company in New York, in 1970, and rose through the ranks. Today David heads the